“She chortled and told me to give it a whirl. I kept tripping over my feet and spilling my booze. It was frustrating being a drunk nine-year-old who didn’t know how to twirl. ‘Just keep trying,’ Martha advised me. ‘When they put you in prison, just keep plotting a path forward—or in this case, around.’ I tried and tried again. Each time, I spilled my martini and had to remake it, and in that way I perfected Martha’s perfect dirty martini recipe. We got completely hammered. Finally, I heard Martha shout, ‘You’re doing it! KEEP YOUR PINKY LEVITATED!!!’
“We giggled together until the sun came up. She made me a spinach and feta frittata, took her Hustler off the counter, and whispered through a proud smirk, ‘Keep twirlin’, kid.’ And that’s how I started dancing.”
NO SCRUBS
“How did you start dancing?” Katie Couric asked.
I cast my eyes downward and said, “I’m not sure you want to know. I was just a kid. Well, I was heating up a Hot Pocket in the microwave when suddenly there was a quick flash and a pop! I turned to the television, where Mariah Carey had been singing in one of her music videos. I could still see her, but now there was no sound. I hadn’t muted it, had I? I flipped to another station. An episode of Seinfeld was just beginning, but there was no trace of the theme music. The episode continued and I could hear the dialogue, but the hilarious, bass-slapping theme music was gone . . . vanished! Panicked, I ran to my room and turned on Z100, New York’s number-one hit music radio station. The DJs were saying, ‘Next up, Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine.’ And then there was complete silence, which lasted for about three minutes.
“That’s when I realized what had happened. I had been transported by my pepperoni Hot Pocket into a dimension without music! I paced the room saying, ‘Think, James. Think!’ I opened my mouth and tried to sing the song I knew best, Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin,’ but there was no sound. I ran back to the living room, to the television, where TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’ music video was now playing. I watched their mouths move, but I heard silence. I closed my eyes, tried to imagine the beat, and began to rock from foot to foot.
“ ‘What was that?!’ I whispered. I had heard something when I moved from one foot to the other. So I tried again, this time adding a bit more oomph to my moves. Huzzah! I could hear a bit more of the music!
“By this point, I had realized that the harder I danced, the more music I could hear. The only thing for me to do was to dance as though no one was watching. Nobody was, anyway. I leaped and twirled from love seat to sofa, from sofa to ottoman, from ottoman to basket of fuzzy blankets, completely losing myself in the swell of the almost-music. Tears burned in my eyes as TLC crescendoed, ‘NO! I DON’T WANT NO SCRUB!’ and pop! I was back in my own dimension by the time Left Eye finished her rap. The next sound that really was music to my ears was the ding! of the microwave: my Hot Pocket was done. And that’s how I started dancing.”
THE TRUTH: ELTON JOHN AND A PHONE BOOK
Bless my parents. They tried—separately, as they divorced when I was two years old—to find an activity that suited me. My father put me into Cub Scouts, which is the little-kid version of the Boy Scouts. I was a member of Troop 84 for a while, but I ultimately asked to quit because I found knot tying and charitable acts insufferable. We had a meeting once and the scout leader said there would be brownies at our next meeting. When the promised “brownies” were in fact little girls, it was the nail in the coffin for me. Very young Girl Scouts are called Brownies. WHAT ABSOLUTE FUCKERY!!! A decade or so later, my father would assist my two younger brothers to complete the program all the way up to Eagle Scout, which basically means you’re the President of Earth.
My father also tried to get me to commune with nature. He took me on fishing and camping trips. I liked camping because I got to eat hot dogs like they were real food and we roasted marshmallows on an open fire. Fishing, however, was tough for me. I do not like worms. I do not like their slimy bodies or the fact that they don’t have faces. When my father asked me to place the bait worms on the hook, I shuddered in horror. And if we caught a fish, forget about it! I was not touching that prehistoric beast!
My father’s efforts were valiant indeed, and relentless. After the Cub Scouts failure he enrolled me in a local Little League Baseball team. I was appointed the enviable left field position. My older brother Andrew was very good at baseball, but it was pure comedy how bad I was. I’d be out in left field doing cartwheels when a ball would come flying at me and land with a thud several feet away. I’d freeze, standing with my feet together, and look down at the ball with my head cocked at an angle, like a cat unsure whether to pounce. Our team was sponsored by the local Dairy Queen franchise and we were promised free ice cream cones if we won. But we never won. Not even once. We were so pathetic that at the end of our final game, our coach said, “Aw, hell. We’re going to Dairy Queen,” and he bought us all ice cream sundaes. That was easily the best part of my Little League experience. Horrible things are always made better by ice cream. Dairy Queen would play a large role in my future, in the drag queen posse the Dairy Queens. Ah, sweet homosexual revenge.
There were a few one-offs as well. I went to gymnastics class a few times, but I was ultimately too apathetic to return. I took about two piano lessons before I realized I wasn’t the next Beethoven and asked to quit. I played the French horn, which is that hilarious tubular horn that one must fist to play. My teacher said I had great French horn lips, which is just disturbing. I joined a soccer team for about two practices before I decided it was too dangerous for my dainty, princess-like constitution. I found my youthful contemporaries to be complete brutes and I found most authority figures to be dummies. I was a sensitive young thespian! Where was my much-needed creative outlet?
I spent the summer of 1993, when I was nine years old, at my mother’s house playing video games on our Sega Genesis, eating Cool Ranch Doritos, and drinking Crystal Pepsi. I had not yet discovered masturbation, so I actually had a lot of free time. I was sitting at the kitchen table, probably eating something horrifying, when there was a loud whomp! next to my plate. My mother had thrown me the phone book and shouted, “Find something to do. You’re driving me nuts!”
I chuckled and began leafing through the phone book (which in pre-Internet days was home to the phone numbers of houses and local businesses), searching for an activity appropriate for a nine-year-old. There was a large, full-page ad for a local dance studio. It featured a photo of a man holding a woman up over his head with one hand. It looked more like an ad for a circus school than for a dance studio. My curiosity was piqued. I asked my mother, “What’s this?” and she said, “That’s the local dance school. Want to go?”
I said, “Yeah,” and that was it. We drove to the studio, which at the time was called the Dance Fitness Connection. It was located in a very 1980s racquetball club, and the dance studios were clearly built for aerobic Jazzercise. “Step class” paraphernalia lined the walls, and there were bright, geometric paint splashes here and there.
Thinking back, there had always been flashes of dance in my life. My father had given me a plastic Fisher-Price record player when I was very young. He fancied himself quite the audiophile. I’d go down to the basement to browse his vast record collection, select a few, and bring them up to my room—after asking permission, of course. A favorite of mine was Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Before I even knew what dancing or choreography was, I could be found in my bedroom, choreographing dances to Elton John’s music.
Each fall, the studio offered a week of free trial classes to attract new students. When my mother and I arrived, the receptionist told us a jazz class was about to begin, and I asked if I could take it. I wore my street clothes: a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I didn’t have jazz shoes, so I just wore my socks. The music was loud and reverberated off the racquet club’s walls, Michael Jackson hee-hee-ing and hoo-ing at an earsplitting volume. We did isolations of the body and c
oordination exercises, and then moved across the floor in unison, spinning and jumping. The class finished with a routine.
I can’t say I was immediately good at dancing, but I liked it anyway because I was having fun. The most fun I had ever had in my life! That first dance class was pure joy. The music. The energy. The movement! It was a ship in the distance, and I was a castaway starving on a lonely isle. Dance shouted, “Ahoy! There’s someone on that lonely isle!” and I replied, “Please save me! Help!” And that’s how I started dancing. For real.
BONUS CONTENT: JESUS
Jesus Christ of Nazareth and I met up at Boxers, an LGBTQ bar in Chelsea. We had met on Grindr earlier that week and his profile said “Visiting.” I sent a photo of my torso and asked, “Visiting from where?” He sent back a photo of his face wearing a beautiful crown and said, “Nazareth, stud.” I love a visitor. I feel like everybody in this goddamned town knows who I am, so it’s nice when I can be anonymous for once. I told him that my name was Bot.
Jesus and I chatted for a while and then we exchanged photos of our penises. Upon mutual penis approval, we decided to meet for a drink at a local bar. I like Boxers because all the bartenders are straight, and they don’t want to fuck me like everybody else does. The DJ was playing Ariana Grande’s “God Is a Woman” and I heard Jesus mutter under his breath, “This lady doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
It was actually a really great date! He was really nice and had kind eyes. And what a beard!!! His body was totally ripped. I could see it through his tight ribbed tank, which had what looked like a large ketchup stain on the front, by his ribs. It was February, yet he still wore sandals . . . so masc. Butch guys don’t feel the cold. It’s been proven. Meanwhile I was dressed in my best furs, looking like a goddamned Muppet.
Once we got our drinks (red wine), he suggested we get some food. He got up and fetched us some bread, saying, “You hungry for my body?” I loved talking to him and I could tell he was really listening to me because he rested his calloused hand on my thigh. I asked him what made his hands so calloused and he responded intimately, whispering very close to my ear, “I work with wood.” My body shivered. He told me all about his woodworking business, which he called Jesus H. Christ Carpentry. The company specializes in livestock troughs and mangers.
Jesus said, “Enough about my wood. What about you?”
I said, “I’m a ballet dancer.”
Then he asked the loathsome question: “How did you start dancing?”
Ugh . . . Jesus Christ.
COMING OUT IN Y2K
When I was young, I’d introduce myself as Jame, for fear that speaking the letter s would reveal my plausible gayness. It’s bizarre to me that one’s sexuality should decide the nature of one’s social standing and be used as a tool to separate and subjugate. I am a cisgender gay man, but it took quite some time to get to that understanding. Many little boys have faced the fear of being gay and, more important, the fear of seeming gay.
As a kid, I was very silly and had a great imagination. I loved the Ninja Turtles and singing and video games. I idolized my brothers. I grew up in a big family in a great town, and with a lot of love. I knew I was different, but that had nothing to do with my sexuality. Being the youngest of my mother’s five children, I often felt special. This feeling was unfounded, as my siblings are all quite brilliant. I have enjoyed the benefits of feeling special all my life, though. It’s given me the delusional self-confidence I thrive on.
My feeling of “otherness,” however, began to manifest in elementary school. I was a very popular child, with more playdates and girlfriends than you can imagine. I had lots of friends who were girls, so the adults labeled them my “girlfriends,” foisting upon me, a child, an unknown sexuality, which to this day I find intolerable. I played hopscotch and double Dutch and was particularly ferocious on the jungle gym, doing backflips and somersaults that would make today’s recess monitors have a coronary. I also liked that the girls were always smarter than the boys. I fancied myself smarter than the boys, too. It was very obvious to me that I was not like them.
My first dick encounter took place in the first grade, when I went to my friend Charles’s house for my first sleepover. Charles’s hair was white-blond and buzzed into a mohawk. We ate dinner with his very kind family and played games, after which his mother instructed us to go and put on our pajamas. When I turned around, Charles was completely naked, pulling his pud, and proclaiming with pride, “I HAVE A PENIS!”
Horrified, I shrieked and ran out of the room to find Charles’s mother. “Mrs. Charles’s mom, I’d like to be taken home. Will Jeeves please bring the stagecoach around?” Why did it startle me so?
During the following years, I began to notice boys in a way that I didn’t notice girls. But I didn’t think of myself as gay or even really know what being gay meant. One summer when I was eight or nine, my brother Andrew, who was four years my senior, invited his best friend to stay at our uncle’s farm with us. Justin Giletti was a lanky Italian boy who was always very nice to me even though I was Andrew’s annoying little brother. I was fascinated by Justin. I couldn’t tell you what he was like, or what he liked to do, but I remember thinking he was wonderful. One morning I was lying on the carpet watching cartoons when Justin walked over to me, wearing nothing but a pair of baggy boxer shorts as he passed by. Herein was my second dick encounter. I gazed up the wide leg of his boxers and glimpsed his dangly sex, and felt something akin to awe. This unidentified preoccupation was completely new to me, and I didn’t give it much thought. I thought being enthralled by Justin’s penis was the same thing as obsessing over Cool Ranch Doritos . . . and maybe it is? I adore Doritos. To no avail, I spent much of the remaining days at the farm on the floor, hoping to catch another glimpse.
* * *
—
My first dance school in Fairfield was famous for having an abundance of male students, a rarity for dance schools. I started there when I was nine years old, and for the first time, I made friends who didn’t judge me according to the rules of public school. Our niche interest overpowered our fear of one another. My two best friends were Kurt and Jordan. We were the Three Musketeers, and we did everything together. We were the same age and had many of the same interests: comic books, video games, and dancing. We even each had many girlfriends, often swapping them out for one another. There was no shortage of girls to date at a dance school, which is a common reason young boys say they dance. “I’m around girls in leotards all day. You’re just around other guys! You’re the gay one!” This is a line we’ve been fed by our dance teachers and family members for decades. God forbid the reason we dance isn’t linked to our toxic masculinity. God forbid we just like fucking dancing to Janet Jackson.
Kurt and Jordan were both from affluent, model families. Their parents were still together, with Lexuses (Lexi?), convertibles, and huge houses with separate bedrooms and unused rooms. I spent almost every weekend at one of their houses. Perhaps that’s why I’m so hell-bent on hustling in my adulthood.
When we were twelve, we discovered Skinemax, the late-night showings on the Cinemax channel, which Jordan had at his house. We’d play video games until about eleven p.m., then turn on Skinemax, hoping for a flash of side boob or a besocked cock. By this point, I was vaguely aware of my attraction to men, but I wasn’t able to pinpoint it. It was a quiet instinct. The truth is, I didn’t even understand what homosexuality was. It wasn’t portrayed on TV as a real, viable existence. I viewed my attraction to guys as similar to a lust for murder or bank robbery. To this day, I have no interest in pulling a big heist or chopping up strangers to flavor a stew . . . I just like dudes.
Kurt didn’t get the Cinemax channel, so when we stayed at his house in Newtown, we’d go to his playroom, turn on the TV, and flip to the Spice Channel. He didn’t actually get that channel, either, so it was scrambled and every porno looked like an acid trip where you’d occasionally
see someone getting pounded from behind, or a bounce of a breast on the lap of a friend. These sad attempts at watching porn often morphed into a scene in which we’d hide our bodies under a blanket and furiously masturbate. These scenes exhilarated me, as the nearness of other male bodies was something I didn’t yet know I enjoyed and didn’t really have a personal definition for. I attributed my eagerness to the hilariousness of the scrambled nineties porn and the feeling that we were really getting away with something good. I wonder if I watched the porn at all, or if I just stole surreptitious glances at my friends while feigning interest in Spice Channel wobble-morph boob.
One night at Jordan’s, I went to brush my teeth and returned to the bedroom to find Kurt and Jordan completely naked and performing fellatio on one another—sixty-nine-ing, if you will. I froze, stock-still, in the doorway. “Wh-wha-what are you doing?”
“James, come join us,” they replied in unison, as if they were asking me to join the communal (cummunal) table at a church potluck. “We’ve been doing this for a while and thought we should include you,” Kurt added. Society had cultured me to want to scream “GOD HATES FAGS!” and run to the nearest police station, but part of me said, “These are my best friends, and who cares?” I was backing away, horrified, when Jordan stood up and led me to the bed, where I had my first explicitly homosexual experience . . . a threesome.
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